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Zen talks out both sides of its mouth.One of one side it tells you what you thinkis you is a fiction, a joke, a nothing. Out ofthe other side: Take care about what you are doing. Do it with precision, excellence,and grace.

Most of us are consistent. If we comprehendthe absurdity of our personal drama, we areoften lazy and inattentive to life. If,on the other hand, we are passionately involvedin the activities of the world, we come to take ourselves too seriously, imagining that our egoshave some reality beyond our thoughts. Zen issingularly two-faced.

When the mind is still, you feel the love. The Buddhists call it "Karuna." Karuna is compassion: not sentimental, not maudlin, notcondescending - just love for your fellow manand awareness of his suffering. Zen all of asudden, you are the Buddha, and everyone isthe Buddha, including the pesky neighborhoodcat.

Compassion says, "Serve, love, be helpful."Buddhahood says: "Who are you helping withyour helping? Everyone is already the Buddha.Getting serious about helping and 'saving' people is very silly." To walk the way of Zenis to walk a tight-rope of active involvementwithout attachment.

To act without acting, to do without doing, to work without working, this is the Zen way.This is making life a play.

There is nothing left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh.

--------------------Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

Zen masters are quite human. They get sick and die; they know joy and sorrow; they have bad tempers or other little 'weaknesses' of character just like anyone else, and they are not above falling in love and entering into a fully human relationship with the opposite sex. The perfection of Zen is to be perfectly and simply human. The difference of the adept in Zen from the ordinary run of men is that the latter are, in one way or another, at odds with their own humanity, and are attempting to be angels or demons.

Or, quite brutally, a poem by Ikkyu:

We eat, excrete, sleep and get up;This is our world.All we have to do after that -Is to die.

And Ikkyu again:

My self of long ago,In nature non-existent;Nowhere to go when dead,Nothing at all.

Thanks for sharing that Skorp, Maybe my path isn't so far off as I percieve. I use a combination of Psychedelics and Rational Emotive Therapy. This combo works for me. Throw in some of the Taoist musings of Castanada and I have a path with heart.

It's a beatiful thing. Chaos I mean.

-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC